Here, you are urged and encouraged to run your mouths about something important.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Columbine Copycat Wannabe is NOT Right Winger

Jared Cano is a teenager who wrote a manifesto that revealed he wanted to carry out a Columbine-style attack at his own high school in Tampa, FL. Whether his problem is genetic or upbringing makes no difference. His actions - or 'would be' actions - should NOT be ascribed to anyone else. There should be no guilt by association. That said, it is the right that is constantly having to defend itself as being partially responsible for these 'lone wolf' nut jobs. The left attempted to blame Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting until it was learned that Jared Loughner's favorite books were Mein Kampf and the Communist manifesto.

A similar line of distinction needs to be drawn here. Cano may have been political but as you can see on his Facebook page, he likes Barack Obama. This is pointed out not to play gotcha with the left but to be pre-emptive against them.

The narrative that Timothy McVeigh was a right-wing extremist Christian continues to this day, despite the fact that he was an avowed agnostic. The recent shootings in Oslo were blamed on a Christian right wing extremist as well but Anders Behring Breveik admitted that he wasn't religious.

Investigators say they found bomb-making materials and drugs in the New Tampa apartment of Jared Cano, a 17-year-old expelled Freedom High School student, after receiving a tip yesterday.

Cano had "intentions of exploding some devices at Freedom High School on the first day of school next week," police chief Jane Castor said.

"We were probably able to thwart a potentially catastrophic event the likes of which the city of Tampa has not seen, and hopefully never will," the chief told reporters this morning.

The department's bomb experts studied materials allegedly found in Cano's room and said the devices could have caused "serious injury up to and including death," the chief added.

Those materials included fuel sources, shrapnel, plastic tubing, timing and fusing devices, but no guns. However, Castor said Cano had previously been arrested for carrying a concealed firearm that he had stolen.

Also found in the teen's room was a "manifesto," Castor said, that included two specific faculty members to target and a minute-by-minute schedule for the attack.

"He mentioned his desire to cause more casualties than were suffered at Columbine," Chief Castor continued.

Just in case anyone tells you Cano was a politically-minded right wing extremist.